


Child in my Arms

by Sangerin



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Babyfic, F/M, Feminist Themes, Gen, Post-episode: "Deadlock", Post-episode: "Endgame", Sappy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-03-01
Updated: 2003-03-01
Packaged: 2017-10-14 18:40:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/152271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sangerin/pseuds/Sangerin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the birth of Naomi Wildman, Kathryn Janeway and those around her reflect on motherhood and childbearing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Naomi

The Doctor handed her to me. She was so small, so fragile. I looked at her in amazement – her existence seemed a miracle. From the biobed her anxious mother watched me, watched each slight movement of my hands as they held that precious new life.

‘She’s beautiful, Samantha,’ I said, the awe evident in my voice.

Her eyes filled with tears. ‘Thank you, Captain. I’m just so grateful to have her.’

I nodded in response, and handed the tiny child to her mother. Samantha gathered the girl up in her arms, glad to have her back. I gently laid a hand on Sam’s shoulder.

‘I’ll leave you two, now. I have a blanket to finish.’

She smiled vaguely at me as I leave the room, but her attention was focused on her child.

I made it to my quarters before my emotions took over. The door closed behind me, and I sank into a chair, stunned by the force of the thoughts and images going through my mind. The fragile weight of the baby, curled against my body, stirred up longings I thought long banished.

‘Hormones, just hormones,’ I muttered. Those longings had only ever been momentary, and I knew they will go away soon enough. But the thought of having a baby, soon a young child, on board, terrified me. It was a fear I thought I’d dealt with, but it was apparent that I hadn’t.

The first time one of my colleagues went on maternity leave, it was a shock. Having children was something I had decided was simply incompatible with a Starfleet career. When I made that decision, it seemed like no great sacrifice to me. I had lost Justin and my father less than a year before, and it seemed unlikely that I would have children in any case. And the death of my father convinced me that a Starfleet career was unnecessarily cruel to the children, too. Then Thea Mitchell, captain of the _Superior_ , went on maternity leave.

She was an old friend of mine, a few years ahead of me in the Academy, slightly ahead of me on the command track. I went to see her and her new baby boy, and I lost my heart to him. Simultaneously, of course, my brain was screaming with red alert klaxons, telling me to get out of there before I did something stupid, like decide I needed a baby, too. I managed, but not without some sleepless nights during the next week.

The blanket I’d been making for the Wildman baby lay on a nearby table. I reached out for it, and for the wool to finish embroidering the initials. Then I saw my dirty hands, marked with the frantic efforts to save the ship from the Vidiians. I pulled my hand back – I didn’t want to spoil the baby’s present. But the effort of getting out of the chair and going to the bathroom to clean up was too much. So I stayed in my chair, thinking of the child’s downy hair, tiny K’tarian horns, and her angelic, innocent face.

* * *

Chakotay found me in my chair an hour and a half later. I had cleaned myself up, changed into a fresh uniform, and begun to work on the last bits of embroidery on the blanket. When he rang the doorchime, I called out to let him in, but didn’t leave my chair. I was far too comfortable.

‘Take a seat,’ I told him, and he sat down opposite me.

‘Quite a day.’

I nodded. It’s hard to respond to a comment like that.

‘I’ve just been to see Sam and the baby,’ he told me. ‘She’s adorable.’

‘Ensign Wildman?’ I asked, teasing.

He grinned back at me. ‘I meant the baby, but I’m sure Samantha would appreciate the compliment.’ He paused, then shook his head. ‘Babies are such amazing creatures.’

‘You make it sound as though they are an entirely different species.’

‘They seem like it to me.’

I remembered his reticence back when Sam announced she was pregnant, and when Kes went through the Elogium. ‘You haven’t had much to do with babies, have you?’

‘No.’ He shrugged. ‘When I was still with my people, it was very much a part of women’s business. Men were supposed to know nothing about such things. I don’t think I’d ever held a baby until…’ His expression darkened.

‘When?’ I could tell that he wasn’t referring to holding Sam’s baby.

He grimaced. ‘It was with the Maquis,’ he said. ‘A Cardassian raiding party had attacked a planet in the demilitarised zone. My ship didn’t get there in time to do anything except pick up the pieces. While we were down there, some of my crew discovered a mass grave. They wanted to document it, and get the information to some of our supporters in the Federation press – try to explain to the Federation what was really happening. I was willing to let them do that, but I didn’t want to disturb the dead myself. I was nearby, and a woman came rushing up to me, a baby in her arms. She wanted to know what my people were doing. I told her as much as I could, and she began to wail. She pushed the baby into my arms and ran over to the grave. Her husband was one of the uppermost bodies. She hadn’t known he was dead – she had thought he had gone to the hills when the raiders came. Left in my care, her baby began to scream. He had a good pair of lungs.’

Chakotay smiled at the memory, but then his face darkened again, ‘He couldn’t be heard above the wails of the mourners. I couldn’t calm the child down, and I was afraid he would make himself ill. All I could do was hold him and rock him in my arms very gently. I was so afraid of hurting him. Finally, B’Elanna noticed how uncomfortable I was. But instead of taking the baby, as I’d hoped, she went and got the child’s mother. It took a lot of encouragement, but eventually she took her child back into her arms.’ Chakotay shuddered as he finished speaking, and I looked over at him. There was nothing I could say to take away the depth and pain of that memory, so I simply stretched out a hand and laid it on his shoulder. We stayed in silence like that for a long time.

* * *

Later I went back, bearing my present for the new baby. The door opened on the sickbay, showing Sam Wildman sitting up in the biobed, a small table at one side holding vases filled with flowers, and some balloons floating near the ceiling. Something told me that Tom Paris was responsible for that particularly twentieth century touch. On the other side of the biobed was the tiny child’s cot, with my chief engineer bending over it in apparent adoration. Kes moved to B’Elanna’s side, then bent down, running a medical tricorder over the baby. She nodded, a signal that we all – B’Elanna, Samantha and I – interpreted as meaning that all was well. Leaving the side of the cot, Kes looked into B’Elanna’s face. ‘You could always have one of your own, B’Elanna.’

The comment was hard to read – only eight months before Kes had lost what was probably her only chance to have a child.

B’Elanna reacted with shock, as though the idea had never occurred to her. ‘Me? No, Kes,’ she replied lightly, laughing it off, ‘I’m content to look at other people’s babies.’ Her eyes drifted back to Samantha’s baby, and I saw in them the ambivalence I sensed within myself.

I moved forward to the side of Samantha’s biobed, and I considered the women around me. Samantha, the new mother; B’Elanna and I, ambivalent about fertility; and Kes, an elfin two year old for whom fertility might never again be an issue. Kes handed the child back to Samantha, and we gathered around the baby in adoration.


	2. Interlude - Madonna and Child

A breeze blew through the window, ruffling the hem of her long dress. Chosen to suit the summery weather, the skirt flapped lazily about her legs, the light fabric lifting easily. Her hair was twisted back in the fashion of the day. This holodeck program was among Kathryn’s favourites – it was so far from her regular existence that it afforded her real relaxation. Here she could stroll along the river, giving her precious time for thought. She could paint in the studio – she could discuss all manner of things with her holographic mentor, one of the most learned men of the Renaissance. The Da Vinci program was a saving grace to her sanity: an oasis of tranquillity in her otherwise highly stressful life.

On this occasion, unusually for her, she sat in the background, watching rather than participating as her mentor worked on the sketch. He drew, in a soft brown pencil, the gentle lines of a mother’s face, gazing down at her newborn child.

The mother’s face was without pain, frustration, agony or exhaustion. It was the gentle face of patience and unending forbearance. It was also a face that was confident, assured of the future, a face with faith in its owner. It was not the face of a scared fourteen year old girl – these paintings and sculptures never showed the mother as a child herself.

Kathryn almost laughed. This was only one ‘mother and child’ picture among many – and none of them ever showed a mother who was scared by the prospect of parenting. None of them ever made it clear that they were actually drawing a fourteen year old girl, barely out of childhood herself. These were images far removed from her own perceptions of motherhood, and although she knew it was a cynical reaction, she couldn’t help but wonder how many human women throughout history had been deluded by similar images of peace and serenity, only to realise that babies don’t only cry, they scream, and can scream as though in no need of breath.

For a moment she was furious with men like Leonardo, who made it all seem so simple, but had never had to go through the physical and mental agonies that never made it to the canvases of paintings or the great works of literature.

She shook her head, a physical attempt to change her mental state – to rid herself of the cynicism that had built up. The evening sun slid lower in the sky, and the warm air flowed around her, surrounding her in something akin to an embrace. This wasn’t the night to be thinking such thoughts – it was a night to sit back in the peace of the evening and enjoy her few moments respite from captaining Voyager and seeing to the needs of the crew.

Yet, when she left the holodeck, she looked back at the easel, and the canvas sitting upon it, and a shadow passed over her face.


	3. Miral

B’Elanna looks like every other new mother I’ve ever seen – amazed, contented, and just the slightest bit scared. She holds her newborn daughter in her arms, gazing down on her with awe, and then looks up at those gathered around her. The Doctor, proudly taking holoimages; her husband, equally stunned and scared; her oldest and closest friend on Voyager, Chakotay. I’ve finally found the time to leave my duties on the bridge, but B’Elanna hasn’t been wanting for visitors. Naomi Wildman has taken it upon herself to screen visitors at the door – no longer the youngest member of the crew, she is already protective of the new baby. At the same time she is looking scared. No doubt she knows, along with the rest of the ship, that Voyager is back in the Alpha Quadrant, being escorted by a fleet of Starfleet’s finest back to Earth. It is enough to make anyone uneasy, but particularly a child who has never known her father or her home planet. So I smile comfortingly at Naomi as she let me in to Sickbay, and promise myself I will spend some time with the girl and her mother before we dock at McKinley.

Right now, though, I have other duties.

‘She’s beautiful, B’Elanna,’ I say.

My chief engineer smiles down at her daughter. ‘She is, isn’t she?’ Then she looked up at me. ‘Would you like to hold her, Captain?’

My heart leaps, and I move forward to take the baby in my arms. She whimpers just a little, but then looks up at me. The baby’s expression seems to soften a little, and she cuddles into me.

‘She likes you, Captain,’ says Tom, the smile on his face broader, and more genuinely angelic than I’ve ever seen before.

I continue to look down at the pale face with its faint Klingon ridges. ‘How does it feel to be a father, Tom?’ I ask. A movement at my shoulder tells me that Chakotay has stepped up behind me, and is gazing at the child from over my shoulder.

‘Incredible,’ Tom replies. ‘Terrifying. Awesome – in the original sense of the word.’

Chakotay reaches around me to stroke the baby’s hand. I look up at his face, which shows the same awe as the rest of us. A picture of us flashed into my mind – how we must look to B’Elanna and Tom, and Naomi standing at the door. Me in my captain’s uniform, holding a gurgling, happy baby. Chakotay behind me, with one arm around me, protective of the baby…and of me.

I look up. B’Elanna and Tom are exchanging amused glances, and I know I have to stop this. I move back to B’Elanna, leaving Chakotay where he is standing. B’Elanna reaches out for her daughter, and I hand the baby back to her and make my farewells. Even in the Alpha Quadrant, work has to be done.

‘Before you go,’ said B’Elanna as I was turning away, ‘Tom and I wanted to ask you both something.’

Chakotay has begun to move towards the door – perhaps he too, has been unsettled. But he turns back, and we stand by B’Elanna’s bedside with a respectable distance separating us.

Tom and B’Elanna exchange glances yet again, and then B’Elanna speaks. ‘We’d like you to be her godparents.’

‘If it weren’t for the two of you,’ Tom adds, ‘We wouldn’t be here, and neither would Miral.’

‘You’re calling her Miral?’ asks Chakotay.

B’Elanna nods. ‘Miral Kathryn.’

I feel tears welling in my eyes and blink them away desperately. ‘B’Elanna, Tom, I’m honoured,’ I say, with a slight crack in my voice. ‘But are you sure you want me to be her godmother?’

B’Elanna smiles – in fact, she glows – in my direction. ‘Kathryn, I can’t imagine anyone better to care for my daughter.’

‘If the need arises,’ Tom adds quickly.

This obviously isn’t just a symbolic gesture on their part, and the responsibility of taking on such a role hits me like a punch in the stomach. I can’t say no – but something keeps me from saying ‘yes’ straight away. ‘I’m honoured, B’Elanna, I truly am. But I need to think about this – get used to the idea. I’ll come back and see you in a while.’

* * *

Leaving sickbay, I go back up to the readyroom and begin tackling the pile of PADDs cluttering up my desk. We are back in the Alpha Quadrant — home of bureaucracy and ‘Fleet politics — and my stomach turns at the thought. All of a sudden the Delta Quandrant, with its Borg and Hirogen, its lack of backup and scarcity of resources, looks tempting, and if I could, I would turn the ship around. For seven years I have been the line where the buck stopped. It has been frustrating and stressful, but as of now I will no longer be making my own decisions. I will be just one more cog in the great wheel that is Starfleet.

And what is strange was that being a single cog in a large wheel had been the career I always wanted. I’d gone into Starfleet knowing that was what captains were, and I was content with that lot. Captains have to buckle under to the bureaucracy – but the payoff is their own ship and the opportunity to drive it around the galaxy. Not too many captains get their ships as far away as I did. They rarely taste the freedom that comes with having to rely solely on your own resources. I've tasted that freedom. I've hated it, but I’ve also loved it, and I don’t want to give it up.

But the question remains: if I don't stay in Starfleet, as a captain or, Gods forbid, an admiral, what will I do? Starfleet has been the focus of my life; and in some strange way, the command structure had become my family. Other captains and commodores and admirals, adjutants and assistants — a poor excuse for a family, and it's not as though I didn't have my own. Mom, dashing from Paris to Indiana to San Francisco and back again, always with a cause, and the connections to see it through. Phoebe, as scatterbrained in her own way as Mom, but we always just say that it's artistic temperament.

Voyager has changed that in so many ways. It is inconceivable that the crew wouldn’t become a family of sorts: living in such close quarters for seven long years could almost be the definition of ‘what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.’ There are bonds between us that I pray never break.

Why then, am I reluctant to take on the responsibility of being godmother to Miral? My old uncertainties about motherhood, even motherhood exercised from the remote position of godmother, are emerging again. I cannot see myself as the protector of an innocent, vulnerable child. I’ve done my best with Naomi, who was always going to be spoilt rotten as the only child in a crew stranded light years away from their own children, nieces and nephews. I did my best for Mezoti, Rebi and Azan, too. But with all four of them, I cared for them at arm’s length. Naomi had Samantha, and her ever-present godfather, Neelix. Mezoti and the twins had Seven – and Joe Carey and Greg Ayala, both of whom missed their own boys so much that they jumped at the chance to parent again. Poor Joe.

We’ve all lost so much.

So much.

* * *

I wallow in the misery of memories until Chakotay rings my doorchime and enters without waiting for my response. Years ago he programmed some kind of Maquis trickery that let him do that. I complained once or twice to Tuvok. My Vulcan friend backed up my first officer on security grounds: Tuvok is the definition of ‘still waters run deep’.

I shake my head at him as he entered. He grins back, one of those dimpled grins I’ve heard the Delaney sisters giggling over. He knows he is in trouble, and he knows I’m not about to make an issue out of it. Highly comfortable with his surroundings, he wanders across the room and sinks down on the sofa. Out the viewport, the escort ships can be seen matching Voyager’s speed.

‘Quite a day,’ he says. ‘Back in the Alpha Quadrant, heading home, and named a godmother, all in one day.’ His light tone is clearly forced.

‘I haven’t agreed yet,’ I say, moving out from behind my desk to join him. ‘Coffee?’

He nods in agreement. Nothing more is said by either of us until we each have a steaming cup of coffee in our hands – being back in the Alpha Quadrant is good for one thing, at least. No more rationing. Coffee on demand.

Chakotay takes a couple of sips of his coffee. He doesn’t look entirely comfortable. ‘I’m not sure how to broach this particular subject with you.’ He pauses. ‘I had a visitor earlier. While we were still in the Delta Quadrant.’

I take a breath. ‘Go on.’

‘Admiral Janeway came to talk to me. It was a very strange conversation.’ He stops and takes another sip of coffee. ‘Kathryn, we’ve…you and I have been growing further and further apart recently. The ship’s gossip network is too good for you not to know that I’ve been spending time with Seven.’

My smile is beyond wry and heading towards bitter. ‘Chakotay, I had no idea until the admiral turned up and told me herself.’

‘Paris is slipping.’ I choose not to reply to that comment, and there is silence for a moment before he speaks again. ‘She told me you were – she was – left alone.’

I nod.

‘I’m sorry,’ he says. Finally, there is some emotion in his voice.

‘It wasn’t you.’

‘It will be…or would be.’

I hesitate before making the obvious reply. ‘It doesn’t have to be.’

He looks back across the room at me, sombre. ‘No. It doesn’t. Kathryn – this thing with…Seven and me…’ He speaks with a strange mixture of reluctance and urgency.

‘I understand,’ I say.

‘No, you don’t. I’m not even sure I understand it.’

‘It’s been five years,’ I say, staring down into my coffee cup to avoid looking at him. ‘I never gave you any reason to believe things would change again.’

‘I should have waited.’

‘You did wait, Chakotay. Longer than I expected.’ I look up.

‘You are not alone, Kathryn. You never have been and you never will be. You believe that, don’t you?’

I nodded. ‘I’m home now. I have Mom and Phoebe.’

‘You have family here too.’ He takes a swig from his mug, then speaks in a lighter tone. ‘Just think – you could be a godmother!’

I smiled. ‘Miral is adorable.’

‘Miral Kathryn,’ Chakotay emphasises the second name. ‘Starfleet isn’t the safest of professions. Tom and B’Elanna deserve to know that if the worst comes to worst, their baby won’t be alone.’

‘I’m not parent material.’

‘You think I am? In some deeply buried part of me, I was relieved when Seska’s baby wasn’t mine. That’s a responsibility I didn’t want, especially not while confined to a starship in the Delta Quadrant.’

‘Has that changed now?’

‘Perhaps a little. Not much. There are some people in this world who simply aren’t meant to have children.’

‘So you do understand how I feel.’

It’s Chakotay’s turn to nod silently.

‘When you said I wouldn’t be alone —’ I prompt after a moment’s pause.

‘I meant it. You’ll always have me. If you want me.’

It is the most direct challenge he’s ever given me. Even the ‘angry warrior’ story was couched in legend. I know how to answer this challenge, but not how to put it in words. I certainly can’t put it into a coherent sentence.

I hesitate so long that he is beginning to look worried. Finally, I manage three words, spoken very softly.

‘Still. Always. Forever.’

He is no more coherent than I was. His eyes widen, and then he grins so broadly I worry that his face might crack under the strain. ‘Thank the Spirits,’ is all he says.

We share a moment of utter bemusement. After such a momentous decision, what should we do? I begin to laugh, and Chakotay joins in. It breaks the tension, which is exactly what we needed.

‘Why are you laughing?’ he asks through his chuckles.

‘It’s so ridiculous,’ I reply.

‘What is?’

‘That a baby would bring us together.’

Our laughter is slowing, and Chakotay recovers enough breath to say, ‘A baby, the Borg, and an admiral from the future: that’s not ridiculous, Kathryn. It’s all in a day’s work for a member of Starfleet.’

I almost begin laughing again, but manage not to. A good thing too, as I was verging on hysterics. Instead, I say, ‘Let’s go tell B’Elanna and Tom their daughter has a set of godparents.’

Chakotay takes my hand, a little shyly. I smile at him, and we walk hand in hand onto the bridge and through the ship to sickbay.


End file.
